Alive and Thriving

David Allen Harrison is not the kind of name you want to try to track down on the internet. When his AOL address, MTMDavid@aol.com (MTM = Marvin The Martian), went defunct about 9 years ago, I lost touch with him, a former college roommate. At the time I last saw him, in 1998, he was about to get married.

I went to great lengths to try to connect with him again, even signing up at Classmates.com for his high school class with the name Marvin Martian. No luck.

Well, this spring, after I had given up, another former college roommate of both Dave's and mine at different times managed to track Dave down via Linked In, the social network for career professionals. So we found out that he was living in Beaverton, OR. Isabelle and the kids and I were already planning to visit my sister Courtney in Cottage Grove, so we worked in a visit with Dave and his family. Yesterday he and his wife Cindy celebrated their tenth anniversary, and their five-year-old twins, Leah and Samantha, start kindergarten today.

We just got back from the trip yesterday. Here are some photos.

Chloe and Julia on the beach

Us at Crater Lake

Aunt Courtney and Her Nieces

Stanley?

Black gold. Oil, that is. North Dakota tee.

What? We won't see any new Beverly Hillbillies, but I am forecasting a number of Phoenix Farmers.

I actually did live in western North Dakota for a summer during the last supposed oil boom, which turned out to be a bust. In the summer of 1982 when I was 14, I lived with my grandparents, worked at my Aunt and Uncle's drive-in restaurant, The Twist, and played baseball in Watford City. Stanley was one of the teams we played, so I've been there. I couldn't tell you the first detail about it though.

I'm just hoping that when it's all said and done, everybody remembers that you cannot serve God and money.

Three Babes and a Daddy

We finally got some recent photos off our camera and onto our PC. Am I a lucky guy or what?


I've decided that I have no problem if Julia wants to play hard to get, even with me.


Chloe, on the other hand, is still permitted to be a pushover for now.


Mama has to watch her step, for obvious reasons...

Our Little Flyers

Well, we made it to North Dakota and back, but not without a mishap or two or three.

As usual, we were scrambling to get out of the house to catch our plane. I was collecting the packed bags and putting them in the car, the same bags we took to Florida in May for a trip one day shorter in duration. To my surprise, our carry on bag was empty. Isabelle claimed we didn't need it. It was getting too late to argue but I did express my concern over whatever was in that bag for our May trip that was not coming with us for this trip.

We made it to the airport, and to our plane bound for the Twin Cities. Everything was going fine, Julia by the window, me holding Chloe in the middle, and Isabelle on the aisle with her tray down for the three drinks we had just been served. Then I noticed a two-tone effect in Julia's jeans that I hadn't noticed before. Remembering that she had guzzled down the contents of her travel cup which had been full of sugar-free lemonade rather than water, I quickly surmised what had happened.

Isabelle reacted with greater surprise than I expected and even disbelief. Uh oh. You guessed it--no carry on bag, no change of clothes for Julia. So we made the best of it. I held Isabelle's tray with our drinks on it while Isabelle squeezed out of the seat and stood up in the aisle. Now I had to figure out how to get Julia over to Isabelle while holding Chloe. So I decided to put Chloe in Isabelle's seat. As I did that Chloe straightened up and managed to kick the full cup of Pepsi all over Isabelle's seat.

Things were getting desperate. I had the only dry seat left. We cleaned up Isabelle's seat, and put down a couple of blankets, got Julia out of her wet jeans and sat back down and drank our remaining drinks. Gladly, we were in the second row from the back. But, the flight was almost over and Julia's jeans were still soaked. We decided we had to put them back on Julia while we went through the MSP airport looking for toddler clothes. As I was putting Julia's jeans back on her, she saw that they were wet and began repeating, rather loudly, "It's dirty...It's dirty...It's dirty..."

We did find a nice Elmo outfit for $12 in the airport and got Julia all cleaned up and changed. Then, at the gate for our next plane, just as we heard the first boarding announcement, we discovered that both our girls needed their diapers changed, pronto. I changed Julia there on the floor, without any trouble. Then as Isabelle changed Chloe, Julia observed the obvious, and began repeating, again quite loudly, "It's yucky...It's yucky...It's yucky..."

As might be expected, from then on our flight experiences only got better.

Avis Rosella Rogness, 7/24/1916 - 6/21/2008

We are on our way to North Dakota to pay our respects to my dear grandmother.

Goodbye, Grandma.

Whistler's Mother's Son

Doesn't everyone have some superhero quality? I'm not that tall, or that strong, or that fast, but there is something at which I am unsurpassed as far as I know. So that makes it rather unofficial, I realize, but still...

The other night I stopped by the cleaners' to pick up my shirts and pants. I wear stuff over and over in the winter time, but with Chloe around they get stinky for reasons that aren't directly my fault, but anyway...

I stepped up to the counter, and the lady behind it, exclaimed, "Whose are these?" and pointed at a handful of freshly cleaned clothes on hangers sitting on the rack right there. "They must be hers!" she continued, as she gestured towards a car that was backing out of the parking space directly in front of the door, windows up (as far as I could tell).

I sprung into action. I walked out the front door, and, as she had just shifted the car out of reverse and into drive, I whistled. Twice. Loud. She looked at me, and I pointed at her clothes, and she smiled, nodded and parked.

"Thanks," she said sheepishly as she walked in and got her clothes. "No problem," I replied. Later the cleaning store lady thanked me again. "I sure can't whistle like that," she said. No she can't. :-)

Eating, Etc.

Here are our little girls in action. I hope this makes you smile as much as they make us smile every day.